The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

When you care about something, you try to do it well. When you care about everything, you do nothing well, which then compels you to try even harder. Welcome to being tired.

IS A CAPSULE WARDROBE WORTH THE HASSLE? A capsule wardrobe is not for everyone, but here’s where the concept is helpful to us all: every item you own is a fixed decision. When you buy something, you’re deciding it’s worth choosing over and over again. You’re deciding to give it space—in your closet and your mind. If your closet is full of items that aren’t worth choosing, they’re taking space away from the items that matter and make you feel like yourself. Keep in your closet only fixed decisions you’re happy making, no matter how many items you have or how well they go together.

That’s the irony of perfection: the walls that prevent your vulnerability from being seen also keep you from being known.

Use the Same Ingredients My biggest stressor is seemingly limitless options. I want every ingredient, every new cookbook, and the time to make every new recipe I can get my hands on. Oh, and I want kids who will eat every bite without complaint. Fat chance.

I'm all for letting go of perfection, but we've somehow conflated order with being fake. I want to stop applauding chaos as the only indicator of vulnerability. You can be real when life is in order and falling apart. Life is beautifully both.

Our culture is obsessed with being real, but we've been using the wrong measuring stick.

efficient systems fail to deliver if they’re implemented without kindness.

You can desire things that someone else doesn’t. You can struggle with something that gives someone else joy. You can care about what matters to you even if it doesn’t matter to someone else, and we can all lovingly and compassionately exist together in that tension.

as a self-righteous perfectionist, I was obsessed with keeping score, avoiding failure, and being impressive.

TO RECAP Ask, What can I do now to make life easier later? Tend to what’s necessary before it becomes urgent. Get specific with the Magic Question, and Lazy Genius literally anything.

Streamline your products by choosing the bare minimum for your most necessary jobs. Don’t force yourself to choose among five different cleaners like you’re scrolling a Netflix queue of disinfectants. Pick up a bottle and go clean. You don’t need to waste time choosing

DECIDE HOW YOU CLEAN ONCE I loathe cleaning, and regardless of whether you share my hatred, deciding once can help the entire process feel manageable. Streamline Your Products When you buy a cleaner that’s on sale, a fancy microfiber cloth, or a magic mop you saw on Shark Tank, you’re making a fixed decision to use that item. If you use it and it adds value to your life, high five. If you don’t use it, it becomes clutter. Stuff is the enemy of clean, and the more stuff you have, the harder it is to clean your house. Ironically, when I’m discontented with my home, I buy things to make it prettier or cleaner, which only makes the problem worse by adding to the noise.

We create unnecessary stress by remaking decisions about how we shop every time we need food, so find a way to decide once and lower the stress.

power comes when you decide once for yourself. Here’s a surprise: every item you own is a fixed decision. When you buy a shirt, a new set of pens, or a gallon of olive oil from Costco, your choice to buy it is also a choice to use, store, and take care of it. Every item you own is a fixed decision.

Self-care should be a regular practice of doing what makes you feel like yourself. It’s a practice of remembering who you are.

If cleaning your house is tending to your home and making space for what matters, think about that for a minute. Breathe.

Essential doesn’t have to mean minimal; it simply means eliminating distraction from what matters.

THE RIGHT ORDER FOR EVERYTHING Any task, from filling out a spreadsheet to having a hard conversation, can be improved by following these three steps: Remember what matters. Calm the crazy. Trust yourself.

True fulfillment comes from subtraction, from removing everything that distracts you from what matters and leaving only what’s essential.

When you care about everything, you do nothing well, which then compels you to try even harder. Welcome to being tired.

if you habitually look behind and beyond where you are, discontentment will be an eager companion

Living in your season means letting your frustrations breathe but not be in charge.

Little did I know you can be just as exhausted from not trying as you can from trying too hard. Managing apathy and survival mode takes as much energy as managing rules and perfection. Still, I leaned into “messy hair, don’t care” to hide the fact that I cared deeply.

ONE SMALL STEP — Name something that stresses you out, and make one fixed decision to make it easier. One, not thirty-seven. And that is the perfect segue into our next Lazy Genius principle: start small.

TO RECAP Limit your decisions by making certain choices once and then never again. Deciding once doesn’t make you a robot but leaves more time for you to be human. You can decide once in any area, including giving gifts, getting dressed, making meals, cleaning the house, and creating traditions.

Streamline Your Routine Vacuum on Thursdays. Clean the mirrors when you dust. Clean the shower before you get out. Clean the toilet before you shower because toilets are gross. Your cleaning routine doesn’t have to be elaborate, be based on days of the week, or even be a routine at all. Deciding once simplifies cleaning, period. Pause and think about the cleaning tasks that sap you dry. What would happen if you made one decision just one time to make the process a little bit easier?

Create a Meal Matrix A meal matrix is a way to decide once what you’ll eat on certain days of the week. Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, and Instant Pot Wednesday are all forms of deciding once. At my house, we always have Pasta Monday, Pizza Friday, and Leftovers Saturday. My choices within those categories are open, but I’ve already made a helpful choice. The nice thing about a meal matrix is that it’s completely customizable. You don’t need me to tell you what to decide once; you can make your own choices and plug them in where they make sense. You don’t have to be overly specific with any day or even have every day filled. Three days are enough for me; fewer or more might work better for you. Regardless, deciding your meal matrix once creates an easy, actionable meal planning system that’s the perfect combination of lazy and genius.

Make the Same Meal When You Have People Over Inviting new people over can feel scary, so make it easier by offering the same meal each time. Choose a crowd-pleasing recipe you feel confident making, and always serve it the first time someone comes to your home. Now you can enjoy being hospitable rather than stressing out over what to have or how it’s going to turn out. Homemade pizza is my personal go-to. I love making it for new friends because it’s fun and everybody likes pizza.*6

The mental energy needed to get dressed each morning is nonexistent. This one decision even spills over into how he does laundry, how and where he stores his clothes, how he packs for a trip, and how he adjusts his clothes based on the weather.